Although being controversial in relation to its validity and reliability1, the MBTI® tool is one of the most deployed personality inventories in the world, with more than 2 million applications a year (Center for Applications of Psychological Types, n.d.) and more than 4,000 research studies, journal articles, and dissertations about the theme since the publication of the first MBTI® manual back in 1962 (Myers, McCaulley, Quenk, & Hammer, 2003). On a personal account, the MBTI® has been an important tool to look inside myself and understand some patterns of behavior that I have always displayed. For the purposes of this post, I will side with Furnham (1996) and assume the test does have two intrinsic characteristics of scientific instruments: reliability and validity.
The MBTI® served as a tool to my knowing better myself and my predispositions, but I am sure it does not capture me as a full human being. We are far too complex for any psychometric or psychological type tool to predict how we will behave in any situation. Jung’s theory predicted that people would have preferences in the ways of dealing with the outer world, collecting information, and processing information. If you allow me a metaphor, just because an individual is right-handed, i.e. he / she usually prefers to use his/her right hand; it does not follow that this same individual will not use his/her least preferred hand - this is a non sequitur. It does say a lot though about the hand I expect him / her to raise against me in a fist fight.
I digressed, I suppose. Coming back to the point, as I have previously shared on my posts (leaders of the world - know yourselves and leadership and obedience), there are no ultimate tools and every paradigm or theory is still partial no matter how comprehensive it might be right now.
If no theory is ultimate, why can’t we combine different theories to better understand our behaviors and even our leaders and followers?
That is exactly what some people have been doing by combining the psychodynamic approach, namely through the MBTI®, the style approach, and the situational approach.
Using Berens’s (1998) temperament theory, Myers, Kirby, and Myers (1998) developed a temperament scale through the MBTI®profiles by combining information gathering (S-N dichotomy) with attitudes (J-P dichotomy) for sensing types (the second letter as an“S”) and decision making (T-F dichotomy) for intuitive types (the second letter as an“N”). Clarifying it: the authors created a temperament matrix based on the following combinations: NF, NT, SP, SJ.
It did not take a lot to combine the MBTI® temperament profiles with the situational and style approach, basically leveraging three tenets:
(i) Behaviors do not happen in a vacuum and nurture and nature constitute a bidirectional relationship in which each influence the other. In plain English, our innate predispositions do shape the environment and the environment does shape our innate predispositions. Nevertheless, getting to know some of such tendencies is valuable;
(ii) The advantage of the style approach to leadership is twofold: (a) it sheds light on what leaders do and act in various situations (Northouse, 2013) and (b) it provides converging evidence that good leaders manage to put together task and relationship (Stogdill, 1974; Kahn, 1956 as cited in Northouse, 2013) . If this is true, then knowing our predispositions, that is, whether I tend to focus on people or on tasks, might provide me with a chance to know my strengths and weaknesses and where I should work on;
(iii) The situational approach to leadership focuses on the ability leaders have to adapt to different situations and to different subordinates, more specifically, to the level of competence and commitment their subordinates show (Northouse, 2013).
Well, if all statements (i), (ii), and (iii) make sense, then there is nothing more natural than combine a tool that makes evident innate predispositions - for leaders and subordinates - with two other tools that allow an individual to realize in a single place his/her behavioral tendencies (focus on tasks or people) and how this individual has to act - by providing support, by coaching, by being directive, or by delegating - to match the situation their subordinates are facing vis-à-vis their level of competence and commitment to tackle that situation in that moment. And that is what the MBTI® with Blanchard’s Situational Leadership® II Assessment provides.
To spice things up and add an interesting lens to the myriad of theories on leadership effectiveness, flow theory (Csikszentmihalyi & Nakamura, 2010) might bring additional insight on how to constantly adapt to situations by balancing challenges and competences to work in a zone of flow, i.e. the zone in which the work is produced effortlessly and with such an intensity that the person performing it does not even realize what she is doing.
In the end, no matter the tool you like the most; no matter the theory you like the most. Maybe leadership theories are just like leaders and followers - they need each other to make sense of the world around them.
References
Blanchard, K., Zigarmi, P., & Zigarmi, D. (1985). Leadership and the one minute manager: Increasing effectiveness through situational leadership. New York: William Morrow.
Burnett, D. (2013). Nothing personal: The questionable Myers-Briggs test. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/science/brain-flapping/2013/mar/19/myers-briggs-test-unscientific
Center for Applications of Psychological Type (n.d.). The Reliability and Validity of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Instrument. Retrieved from http://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/reliability-validity.htm
CPP (n.d.). Using the Myers-Briggs® instrument with Blanchard's Situational Leadership® assessment. Retrieved from https://www.cpp.com/pdfs/mbti-situational-leadership9_21_10.pdf
Csikszentmihalyi, M., & Nakamura, J. (2010). Effortless attention in everyday life: A systematic phenomenology. in Effortless attention : a new perspective in the cognitive science of attention and action (pp. 179-189) MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/754033381?accountid=13158
Furnham, A. (1996). The big five versus the big four: The relationship between the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and NEO-PI five factor model of personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 21(2), 303-307. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(96)00033-5
Myers, I. B., Kirby, L. K., & Myers, K. D. (1998). Introduction to type: A guide to understanding your results on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Palo Alto, Calif: Consulting Psychologists Press.
Myers, I. B., McCaulley, M. H., Quenk, N. L., & Hammer, A. L. (2003). MBTI manual: A guide to the development and use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (3rd ed.). Mountain View, Calif: CPP.
Northouse, P. G. (2013). Leadership: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage.
Pittenger, D. J. (1993). Measuring the MBTI... And coming up short. Retrieved from http://www.indiana.edu/~jobtalk/Articles/develop/mbti.pdf
1The MBTI® tool is controversial to say the least. “Not surprisingly”, one may think, given its (i) link to the psychodynamic approach, (ii) the complicated relationship between foes-once-friends Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, and (iii) the fact that two non-scientists - actually mother and daughter - Katherine Briggs and Isabel Myers developed the tool (Burnet, 2013).
Reliability of the MBTI® is hotly debated with researches pointing to scores of 50% of reliability (Pittenger, 1993) whereas others point to a reliability of 75% or higher (Center for Applications of Psychological Type, n.d.; Myers et al., 2003).
Validity of the MBTI® is also debatable with researches pointing out failures considering factor analysis and predictive validity (Pittenger, 1993) while others point to satisfactory validity (Carson, 1985; Furnham & Stringfield, 1993 as cited in Furnham, 1996).
The discussion above is not, though, the focus of this blog post, but rather a warning for the reader to take his/her own conclusions about the reliability and validity of the MBTI®.
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